The Emergence of Flexible Devices

This isn’t the first time the tech world has buzzed about screen technology that can bend, but Sony just made a move that brings rollable screens closer to mass market. They released what they call “the world’s first” prototype flexible color video screen. The screen is made from thin-film transistors that deliver a 432 x 240 pixel resolution.

“Even after 1,000 cycles of repeatedly rolling-up and stretching the display, there was no clear degradation in the display’s ability to reproduce moving images,” said Sony, but this doesn’t even begin to address the fact that other components in the devices we use may not be ready for this kind of flexibility.

Director of the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University, Nicholas Colaneri, told the New York Times that we probably won’t see flexible displays for a few years. “The display panel itself is only a small part of the battle. All the ancillary electronics, the power, transistors and circuitry are all things today that are not yet fully flexible at large scales.”

Maybe in a few years our tablets, readers and cell phones will roll up like the pages of a magazine.